Episode 1458: The Overlooked League Leaders
Date November 18, 2019 Summary Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about “sinister right-handers” and scientific songs, then discuss the latest revelations about the Astros sign-stealing saga before reviewing the overlooked accomplishments of some of 2019’s league leaders and discussing the role of bold ink in the era of sabermetric saturation. Topics * Update to the Astros sign-stealing scandal * Involvement of the Astros' scouts and front-office in sign stealing * Estimating punishments for the Astros * Overlooked league leaders from 2019 * Role of 'bold ink' in the sabermetric era * Christian Yelich and Mike Trout * Whit Merrifield * League leaders on bad teams * Single-season doubles record * Batter strikeout rate * Maikel Franco and leading the league in IBB * Complete game leaders * Breaking the single-season strikeout record * Catcher defensive statistic leaders * Statcast league leaders * Which defensive statistics to value * Drop in qualifying pitchers and hitters * MLB awareness in 2019 of the Astros sign-stealing Intro Liam Gallagher, "Bold" Outro Sloan, "Follow the Leader" Banter * Sam was reading a research paper that referred to players that batted left but threw right as 'sinister righties'. He was surprised at how the paper made this seem like a common reference, but neither he nor Ben had ever heard the term. The paper suggested that Canadian-born players might be more likely to be sinister righties because they grew up playing hockey. * In a diversion that Ben refers to as 'etymology corner', Sam reviews the origins of the word sinister and its link to left-handedness. * Sam read an article from research that claimed to have developed the perfect tool for analyzing pop songs. The researchers concluded that Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by The Beatles was the most perfect pop song ever. Sam described their tool as 'like xwOBA for pop music'. Notes * Clips from the Astros commemorative DVD showed the setup that may have been used for assisting in sign-stealing. There was a monitor setup and a towel hung to possibly obscure officials from seeing the setup. * A recent report linked Kevin Goldstein to the sign-stealing allegations. Goldstein had emailed scouts in 2017 encouraging them to attempt to steal team signs by looking into team dugouts. Goldstein has been a guest on several episodes of Effectively Wild, most recently Episode 1000. * Sam draws an extended comparison between sign-stealing and speeding while driving (and allowing a certain amount of sign-stealing/speeding). He says that teams have for a long time stolen signs by other means (runner on second, looking into the dugout, etc) but that the ability to steal signs becomes too powerful with cameras. Drivers speed but the introduction of speed cameras makes it easy to catch speeders. * Sam reviewed the league leaders in a variety of traditional and sabermetric categories and was surprised at how many of them he didn't know. * This is the second year in a row that Mike Trout did not lead the league in a statistical category for the first time. Tracking new 'black ink' categories for Mike Trout was first discussed in Episode 961. * Leury Garcia scored 47% of the time he got in base, which led MLB. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 1458: The Overlooked League Leaders * Images of the Astros dugout tunnel in 2017 * Astros executive asked scouts for help stealing signs and suggested using cameras, email shows by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich * Astros exec suggested using cameras to spy in '17, sources say by Jeff Passan * MLB told video monitors to listen for Astros’ banging sounds in 2019 by Chandler Rome * Effectively Wild Secret Santa Sign-Up Category:Episodes